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UNSETTLED QUESTIONS IN THE ORGANIZATION AND 
ADMINISTRATION OF THE SCHOOLS 



Ain address 



BY 

ANDREW S. DRAPER LL.D. 
Commissioner of Education of the State of New York 



AT 



The National Educational Congress 
Lewis & Clark Exposition 



Portland Ore. 



August 28, 1905 






UNSETTLED QUESTIONS IN THE ORGANIZATION AND 
ADMINISTRATION OF THE SCHOOLS 

There are certain fundamentals of the American educational sys- 
tem which, it may well be said, are settled. They are settled by 
common thinking and universal acceptance ; by legislative sanction 
and judicial determination. They are looked upon as the necessary 
basis of our political system ; as the essential support, guardian and 
guide of a democratic form of government. 

Some matters settled 

It is settled first or all. for example, that our schools are to be 
free. They are to be supported at the common cost. All property 
is to contribute its share. They are to be open to all. There is to 
be nothing about them to which any may justly object on con- 
scientious grounds. They are to be managed and their particular 
character and accommodations determined and provided by the 
people in primary assemblages or by officers chosen by the people. 
It is accepted that they are subject to the legislative power in each 
state because they are supported by taxation and the power of taxa- 
tion is a sovereign power which can be exercised only by the Legis- 
lature. The legislative power which levies taxes must account for 
the manner in which the revenues are used. This logically results 
in very considerable legislative control and direction over the schools, 
but the local interest in the schools is so great and so jealous of 
prerogative that the legislative powers go only to general and vital 
principles, while the real organizing, housing and administration of 
the schools are, and are likely to remain, local. It is settled that the 
power of the state shall undertake to assure a suitable school within 
accessible distance of every home and that each local community 
shall elaborate and embellish its particular school as far as the 
majority rule will authorize or permit. It is settled that there shall 
be a free high school in every considerable town and a free university 
in every state unless an endowed university is already upon the 
ground and in some measure meets the public needs. It is settled 
that all grades of schools shall articulate together with some exact- 
ness ; that instruction shall be continuous from the primary school 
to the graduate school in the university, and that all pupils shall be 

2 By transfer 
OCT 12 ISOfi 



encouraged to go as far and as high as they will. It is fundamental, 
though it has not always been so, that girls shall have the same rights 
as boys in the schools. It is settled that the Legislature may provide 
for training teachers, and establish the methods, the standards, and 
the authority for determining their qualifications ; it is further set- 
tled also that the Legislature may go as far as it pleases in appro- 
priating moneys directly to the support of the schools or in fixing 
the sums which localities must raise, absolutely or conditionally; 
and may go further and create such supervising officers and such 
machinery for promoting effective teaching as it pleases. 

The vital American principle that there shall be no organic or 
financial relation between the state and any church, between a school 
supported in whole or in part by taxation and any sectarian interest, 
has a decisive bearing upon the affairs of the public schools. The 
state will encourage every movement or enterprise which promises 
to be of advantage to any factor in the population by giving its 
sanction and approval thereto, but it will not enter into any business 
■or moneyed relation with any class or faction as against any other, 
and it will not divest itself of any part of its power and function to 
deal with all sectional, class, religious or partizan interests with 
■exact and impartial justice. Accordingly, the public schools are 
•common to all, must avoid all entanglements, and, in the fullest 
practicable measure, must be of equal advantage to all. 

It is not possible, nor desirable, to enumerate all of the foundation 
principles of the common school system. They are easily traceable 
to the essential principles of our federal and state Constitutions, to 
the settled doctrines of the common law and to the uncontroverted 
usages which have grown up in the thought and the public life of 
this country. Wherever the developing educational system comes 
in contact with these headlands of our political theory and our system 
of jurisprudence it will be well to understand at once that the educa- 
tional system will have to adjust itself to them. These fundamental 
principles are well " settled," and, so far as the features and phases 
of the school system relate to such principles, they will have to be 
■considered " settled " also. 

Aside from this, nothing is settled beyond recall and nothing has 
gone beyond the possibility of a change. Indeed, the adaptability 
and effectiveness of the schools depend upon unceasing modifications 
which are in keeping with the new conditions which are constantly 
arising, the new educational experiences which continually crowd 
upon us, and the new purposes and outlooks which are every day 
opening up to us. 

We can not too often point out that our educational progress is 
measured by the freedom and confidence with which we do things. 



provided we keep sane, have proper respect for what our prede- 
cessors have done, and do not make changes for our own diversion 
or for the mere sake of a change. Men who would make a minor 
position in the school system the means of attracting attention or 
gaining notoriety, men who can destroy and not construct, men who- 
are more ambitious than useful, often make trouble by supporting 
all sorts of changes in the schools. That is one of the difficulties- 
with which a democracy has to contend. But that is only a difficulty 
in administration, and not a real question in constructive or adminis- 
trative policy. Happily, the school system has gone beyond the 
point where such men can do it much harm. They are powerless to 
do much good or harm. Any real problem in the organization and 
administration of the schools will have to be met by experts in educa- 
tion — men and women who know the history and have studied the 
philosophy of education, who realize the underrunning currents of 
American life, and are desirous of shaping the schools to the pur- 
poses of a nation which is bound to give every one his chance and 
whose public policies and educational instrumentalities must aid and 
encourage every child of the republic to make the most of his chance. 
Such men and women need not fear to take the initiative in meeting 
any new questions which may arise in the school system, or to make 
any changes which, after discussion, are supported by anything like 
a consensus of opinion. The life and virility of the educational 
system depend upon their doing so. 

I am to suggest — but must leave it to you to settle, — if they are 
to be at once settled — some of the problems which now seem to con- 
front the American school system. Presenting them with sufficient 
detail to disclose their reality, I shall not feel called upon to sustain 
one view or another with arguments, or even to indicate any opinion 
of my own concerning their solution. 

State and local control of the schools 

It is an open question how much initiative and control shall be 
exerted by the state and how much shall be left to the locality, con- 
cerning the schools. Of course, since the public school system has 
come to be supported by taxation and the power of taxation can not 
be exercised except by the sovereign authority of a state, there is no 
question about the state having ample power to do what it will about 
the schools. But there is very serious question about the measure 
of direction which the state ought to impose. People learn to do by 
doing. An officer bearing the appointment and exercising the au- 
thority of the state may know more about educational organization 
and administration than a local school meeting or local official may 
be expected to know, or, knowing, may be able to do. He may do- 



things better than they will be done without him. Yet, if he initiates 
and supervises everything, the people will come to depend upon him, 
and will invariably look to the state to do what would broaden and 
strengthen them if they would do for themselves. On the other 
hand, people need educational intrusion from the outside. It often 
happens that a community thinks that it has the very best schools 
when it has almost the worst. The difficulty is that it can not see, 
and of course it can not do. How are state control and local self- 
initiative and administration to be balanced with the best results? 

State and local support of the schools 

Very akin to this question is another, as to the measure of money 
which the state should provide for the support of the schools, and 
the amount which should be left to each city, town or district to 
supply. In many states the support of the schools is left altogether 
to the locality. In others a very considerable sum is distributed 
annually on some basis which requires the stronger sections to aid 
in some measure the weaker ones, and so equalize educational advan- 
tages over the state. The city of New York, for example, pays 
annually about a million and a quarter of dollars to aid other sections 
of the state which are financially weaker. Of the legal competency 
of the Legislature to exact this there can be no question. Of the 
substantial aid to the rural districts of the state there is no doubt. 
But people are never satisfied with the amount of money which they 
get for nothing; The more they get the more they demand, the 
■more they come to depend upon it, and the less they will be willing 
to raise for therriselves. It is clear enough to me that in education 
-the stronger and wealthier sections of a state ought to help the 
weaker and poorer ones. But, in justice to themselves, the Weaker 
ones should not be allowed to take all they will. How are the state 
and the local support to be adjusted so as to assure the best schools 
in every section and promote the highest interests of an entire com- 
monwealth? 

The distribution of state funds 

Again, if the state is to raise and distribute funds for the support 
of local schools, how is the distribution to be adjusted as between 
the primary, secondary and higher schools ? There are- some pre- 
cious souls who, if they are in favor of anything educationally, think 
they are for the "three R's" exclusively, or, at most, they are for 
anything beyond the " three R's " only when the need of their being 
for it has wholly passed away. Yet we know very well that a mere 
ability to read and write and cipher does not now sustain intellectual 
life and democratic institutions anywhere in this country ; and we 
know quite as well that the excellence of the primary schools is 



dependent upon the prevalence and efficiency of the secondary 
schools. Schools are of little worth without schools above them: 
thus it is to the very limits of knowledge and of teaching power. 
But the secondary schools are more costly than the elementary 
schools, and the higher are more expensive than the secondary. 
How is the state to use its power so as to balance the school system, 
assure an equitable distribution to the different grades and so secure 
the best results which wisdom can devise ? 

The teaching force 

Yet again, how is the teaching force to be made the best possible? 
There are more who want to teach than there are places. The pay 
is not large, but the work allows considerable leisure and satisfies 
pride. The unprepared ones are to be shut out. But who are pre- 
pared and who are unprepared ? Some who know less that is found 
in books than others do are better teachers than the others are. 
Surely, some who are not very successful in passing examinations 
are acceptable teachers. Some definite scholastic attainments are 
necessary, according to grade. Some general culture is imperative, 
regardless of grade. What parent wants to send his child to a 
coarse and mannerless teacher, no matter how much he knows of 
some things ? Some professional training in educational theory and 
in teaching methods is requisite. Then there is the matter of spirit 
and finally of adaptability. But this refers to the individual teacher. 
How is the morale of the whole force to be uplifted ? It can not be 
done through indifference and inattention. It will not move for- 
ward of its own motion. It can not be done through political officers 
who know less themselves than they are bound to exact of the teach- 
ers. It can not be done through examinations alone, and it can not 
be done without examinations. It can not be done with a rush, and 
it can not be done through harshness to worthy and deserving 
teachers. It is a matter of sound plan, steadily followed for a long 
time. How is the plan to be determined upon, and by what method 
is it to be carried to a meritorious conclusion? 

The supervision of the schools 

Then there is always the unsettled question of competent super- 
vision. The office of school superintendent is an American crea- 
tion. In other constitutional countries the schools do not attempt 
as much as ours do ; the teachers are men with life tenure who 
follow the instructions of the government minister of education in all 
things ; the work is routine ; the habit of attendance by young chil- 
dren in primary schools is universal ; there is no mixing of classes 
and no articulation of schools, and the results place the percentage 
of illiteracy lower than in this country. With us the curriculum is 



long and diversified ; we instruct all classes of children and we do it 
in the same schools ; our teaching force is changeable, not so pro- 
fessional in character and often overtaxed. We have tried to over- 
come difficulties by general supervision, and in a measure we have 
succeeded. But the really professional superintendent is largely 
without legal authority, and the political superintendent, who often 
survives in the rural districts, is frequently without professional 
efficiency. Generally speaking, wherever there is a professional 
superintendent he is subject to an unprofessional board which is 
not without self-confidence in all that concerns the schools. In a 
word, we have to contend with the disadvantages of democratic gov- 
ernment, and that fact sometimes obscures the other fact, particu- 
larly to teachers, that there are more advantages than disadvantages 
in government by the people. 

The prerogatives of school superintendents 

The legal and authoritative prerogatives of school superintendents, 
both in city and country, is an unsettled matter in American educa- 
tion. Under the prevailing conditions, and conditions which are 
inherent and not quickly to be changed, supervision is highly im- 
portant. It is not too much to say that the value of the instruction 
is very dependent upon its professional qualities and closeness. Apt- 
ness in supervisory leadership is not wholly dependent upon the same 
qualities which make for effectiveness in teaching. Then how are 
we to get adequate training and experience in a sufficient number 
of men and women to supply the needs? And how are we to treat 
superintendents, concerning functions, responsibilities, and compen- 
sation, so as to secure and retain true manliness and real womanli- 
ness, decorated with the qualities which vitalize professional leader- 
ship, and shorn of the attributes of mere schoolma'amishness, in 
supervisory positions ? 

To be a little more specific, what are to be the standard attain- 
ments of superintendents? , How much are they to have to do with 
appointing or removing teachers, with framing courses of instruc- 
tion, with adopting textbooks, with determining disputes, with regu- 
lating the progress of pupils, and with developing the morale, and 
spirit and power of the schools? How are they to be saved from 
humiliation by directors and trustees who have legal prerogatives 
but no knowledge of the delicate and perplexing matters involved in 
the administration upon modern lines of mixed and ambitious 
schools? How is there to be any supervision worthy of the name 
in the country districts? With the new means of transportation 
and communication, is it not pretty nearly time to eliminate the 
" rural school problem " altogether, to take a more advanced position 



concerning the professional standing of the rural superintendent or 
commissioner, and to make supervisory districts in the farming sec- 
tions of a size which will permit real superintendence and enable all 
the teachers to come in once a month and sit around a table for dis- 
cussion and for instruction? Svirely, these are unsettled questions 
which will have to be worked out slowly in the further evolution of 
our public school system. 

The size of school districts 

The size of the school district in the farming regions has been 
much in discussion for several years. From the settlement of 
the country, the school district outside of the towns has been 
small enough to place a schoolhouse within walking distance 
of every home. To be sure the walk has often been a long one, 
but the whole world is relative and it has not seemed so long 
to those who had to make it as to the less hardy people in the 
cities. As fast as the country was settled, or the distance 
became impracticable by reason of new homes, another district 
was created and a new schoolhouse built. Now there is some- 
thing of a movement to make larger districts and to consolidate 
districts, carrying the children to and from school when neces- 
sary, in order to l^ave larger schools, more elaborate buildings, 
and graded courses of instruction. This movement has not, by 
any means, gone so far as to become a policy. Many arguments 
have been addviced in its favor. The ones opposed have not 
been much presented. They can not be fully brought forward 
here. But such questions as the followdng are surely not imper- 
tinent in this connection : 

Are we altogether certain that a large school is better than 
a small one, or a graded than an ungraded one? Is not the 
essential difference in the teaching and in the supervision, and 
may not efficient instruction be assured in the small country dis- 
trict by a course less open to objection? 

Is it, considering the exigencies of carriage and of weather, 
well to require young children to go farther from home than 
is imperative? 

Is it better to centralize and complicate administrative 
machinery, with the necessary delegation of the authority for 
maintaining the schools from the people in primary assemblages 
to their representatives and officials, or to keep control as close 
to the people as possible and in the simplest forms compatible 
with efficiency? May not the district school be expected to meet 
the circumstances and the elementary needs of its immediate 
constituency very well indeed, and is not the matter of main- 
taining the schoolhouse and of providing for the modest expenses 

8 



■of the schools Hkely to keep the people more interested in the 
schools than they will naturally be if the school is more remote 
and the measure of their control is lessened? Can not any 
real difficulty be met by continuing elementary schools as here- 
tofore and by supplementing them by central high schools? 1$ 
it not better to continue the unit of district school administra- 
tion as it prevails over large areas of the country, as far at least 
as local control over the location and the character of the build- 
ing and providing for expenses are concerned, and by making a 
different unit for supervisory purposes which may be large 
■enough to get a strong enough superintendent and yet not so 
large in miles as to make real supervision impracticable? Is 
not the real difficulty in the country politics and the size of the 
supervisory district and lack of professional control over the 
teacher and the teaching, rather than in the size of the school 
•district? Is the location of an elementary school within the 
smallest practicable distance from every home, and the posses- 
sion of a popular meeting place by the smallest hamlets and the 
■crossroads regions, to be surrendered without the most impera- 
tive necessity or until it is clearly proved that the change of 
plan does not involve greater difficulties than any which are 
now pending? These interrogations do not necessarily negative 
the policy of consolidation but it seems to me that they are 
sufficient to suggest that it is very much within the zone of 
unsettled questions. ' 

Teaching as a vocation 

There is at all times a sufficient supply of unsettled questions 
•concerning the development of a uniformly virile teaching 
service, both in city and country. It must be said that teaching 
does not attract the larger number of forceful characters. The 
compensation is insufficient and the opportunities for distinc- 
tion are held to be lacking. Men have very generally ceased 
to prepare themselves for teaching and the same is largely true 
of the more ambitious women. No one can question that the 
Taest interests of the teaching service claim as much of the 
masculine as of the feminine mind, beyond the primary schools 
at least. No one can doubt the need of the most aspiring women 
in the schools. Any great work among large numbers of both 
sexes requires the cooperative help of both men and women and 
of the strongest and most expectant men and women in the 
world. The ordinary conditions of the teaching service do not 
make for this. And there has been in recent years a remarkable 
educational development which, indirectly but strongly, opposes 
it. That is the expansion of the colleges and universities so as 



to prepare for all of the professions, and the multiplying of 
vocations for educated and aggressive men and women. More- 
over, the colleges, perhaps unintentionally, prepare for every 
other vocation better than for teaching, and their indirect influ- 
ence is against teaching. University teachers are not very 
familiar with modern work in the lower schools, and the inter- 
ests of their own special branches displace any serious concern 
for a unified organization or an all around service in the schools 
below. They are not only more interested in the pupils who are 
going to college than in those who are not, but also in the 
pupils who are headed for their departments more than in those 
who are likely to elect other branches for future study. All this 
is turning nearly all the men and many of the best women, who 
in other times would have looked to teaching as a vocation, to 
other work, and it is lessening the independence and effective- 
ness of the teaching force to a degree which is hardly com- 
pensated for by the larger knowledge of educational principles 
and the improved methods of the modern agencies for training 
teachers. The live question is — how are we to assure a teach- 
ing force which shall be free from specially defective factors 
and generally as capable and spirited and aggressive as that 
which manages the other great, though less important, intel- 
lectual activities of the nation? Ahvays a pressing question, 
the growing importance and the growing difficulties of the sub- 
ject make it more weighty now than at any previous time. 

However important the form of the legal school organization, 
and however imperative the character of the men and women 
who teach the schools, there is nothing about the schools so 
vital and, it may also be said, so difficult, as a sound determina- 
tion of what work the schools shall do. 

The Minister of Education in other countries does not have 
a very hard time deciding what the primary schools shall do 
and how it shall be done. He does it alone. He follows either 
the law or long and unchangeable usage. The teachers are 
men and the tenure of position is for life. Every teacher obeys 
the Minister's directions without question. He has to provide 
a simple curriculum for children of the peasant class who ex- 
pect to live exactly as their fathers have lived. The work is 
not to inspire children to do their best and rise to high places 
among their fellows ; it is not to fit them for the work of 
advanced schools ; it is to drill them to read and write and work, 
through very ordinary and dead-level lives. It satisfies the 
demands of the rather slow-going and monotonous life of the 
people whom these foreign schools serve. 

lo 



American schools democratic 

It is wholly different in America. Our schools are not shaped 
and managed by a minister, a cabinet, or a monarch, but by 
the people. The common thought and general usage have set- 
tled the outlines of the system. Each community fills in the 
details and carries them as far as it will. Everybody has a 
proprietary interest in the schools. The administration is 
through popular elections, and changes in administration are 
frequent. Changes in the teaching force are frequent, also. 
There is not much resistive power. Every one with a project 
thinks the schools ought to carry it out. It is not so hard for 
one with a scheme to load it upon the schools as it is for an 
administrative officer or a teacher to keep it out. People who 
mean well, but who are without any grasp of the general prob- 
lem, often turn the course of the schools aside from its ordinary 
and natural channel. 

From the standpoint of school administration, every American 
child is bred in the purple. He is to have everything that the richest 
child in the world can have in the way of instruction if he will take 
it, and all of the fixed influences, direct and indirect, censure him if 
he neglects to take it. Every boy must infer from all he hears that 
he will be discredited unless he follows an exclusively intellectual 
pursuit, and every girl must believe that her happiness depends upon 
her becoming literary and knowing about art and the opera, and 
wearing silks and directing servants — when the silks are often elusive 
and always illusory and the servants are more elusive and illusory 
still. 

All classes mix in our schools. As I passed a ward school the 
other morning I saw two little girls, whom I recognized, pass in at 
the same time. One was the daughter of a prominent officer of the 
state and the other was the daughter of my office messenger. The 
association was quite as good for the child in the higher social 
station as for the one in the lower. It will do something to keep 
the first sane. The second will be most influenced by the foibles and 
fancies rather than by the substance and the real graces of the 
other. 

At the annual meeting in a little school district, both rich and 
rural, on Long Island, held the other day, the accomplished wife of 
one of the wealthiest men of the country whose name is familiar to 
all, and the village livery keeper were elected trustees of the district 
school. There was something of a contest and they were both sup- 
ported by the same votes. The woman stood for something very 
decisive in the betterment of the school. It was an admirable result. 



II 



They will doubtless be of substantial service to each other and to the 
public in caring for the school. Each will surely learn something 
worth knowing from the other. In a common service they will be 
more tolerant of each other, and a rational service may lead two lots 
or " bunches " of people to see more that they like in each other 
than they had before realized. In an European school, or in the 
management of one, such associations w ould be wholly impossible and 
the manifest advantage would be absent. But the European political 
and educational systems are not intended to bind classes together or 
to give every one an equal chance with every other. 

The articulation of the schools 

We have a continuous and pretty well articulated school system, 
from the kindergarten to the university. Teachers and children are 
■continually enjoined to be thinking of the next school above. A 
teacher whose pupils do not pass is discredited. A child who does 
not pass is in peril of being eternally lost. This may not be really 
■so dreadful to the individual teacher and the individual child, though 
each thinks it is. It may be as well to have some pressure as to 
have everything fall down and everybody become lackadaisical for 
the want of attention. But does it not inevitably attach more sig- 
nificance to the upper than to the middle schools? Does it not 
assume that the road to college and the road to glory are all the 
same? 

And are they? No thinking man can doubt the self-satisfaction 
and enlarged intellectual enjoyment which commonly result from 
college training. No one will be disposed to deny the advantage 
which the liberally educated and disciplined mind has in severe men- 
tal work and particularly in intellectual combat. No one can fail 
to see how the higher institutions break out new roads and lead the 
thinking of the world to higher planes. And surely no school man 
can ignore the fact that the vitalizing, the energizing, and the 
steadying of the lower schools must necessarily come from the 
higher schools. But there are those who will deny that it is desir- 
able that all children shall go to college. There are enough who do 
not think that it is better to have a college degree and admission to 
a profession, with little adaptation to it and little to do after it, than 
it is to master a manual vocation and have plenty to do. There are 
folks in the world who dare to suspect that many a one becomes 
really unbalanced and pretty nearly useless through college teaching 
and college study, when he might have been happy and useful if 
conditions and normal inclinations had been regarded and if he had 
found himself in a work where he could have had the reward and 



12 



the joy which come from accomplishing things. There are those 
who even venture to suspect that men and women with work which 
they love and the steadiness and balance and respect which they gain 
by doing it are safer citizens and more attractive characters than 
men and women who have been through the schools without being 
able to put the training of the schools to the doing of things which 
are of moment to the world. 

It is not a matter of the value of the higher learning to the world 
-at large ; it is a matter of the power and purpose of each individual 
to make it of most use to himself. The unambitious or the incapa- 
hle rich, who are not in danger of doing much anyway, may very 
well go to college, if they can be kept from ruining the colleges while 
there. The rich who have work and sand in them will ordinarily 
seize upon college training while they enlarge the substance and 
illustrate the point and power of it. The poor must balance values : 
they will coolly calculate the worth of it to any plans which they 
may have, or they will leave it to chance and take whatever the con- 
sequences may be. If there is something like a definite purpose in 
mind, if the college training is put to real use, the consequence 
will be a finished and resourceful character, and the harder the work 
and the more the sacrifices the stronger and the more dependable the 
character will be. If, however, there is no serious plan or purpose 
about it all, no power to appreciate and adapt the college training 
•and discipline, the result will be a past master in dudism so long as 
one has the money to sustain the role, or a misfit and partial, or total, 
failure when one must earn his living. 

The percentage of men who have reached the highest positions 
•of leadership and influence without the training of the most advanced 
schools, as compared with those who have had that advantage, is sur- 
prisingly large. It is because they have had the stufiE in them and it 
has been developed and seasoned in life. They have not depended 
upon books or been largely controlled by theories ; they have squared 
their lives with the actualities of living ; they have been both patient 
and aggressive ; they have found the way to accomplish something 
worth while. It was something not set forth in books. But this 
has been suggestive to the college ; and the courses of study, the 
■characteristics of teachers, the methods of instruction, and the atmos- 
phere of the places have been so radically modified in the interests 
-of doing as against talking that, aside from the increased number of 
•students who go to college, the advantages to the college man as 
against the other are very substantially enlarged. And, of course, 
with an independent, sane and balanced character, having the ele- 
ments of strength and success anyway, the advantages of a college 
training can not be overestimated. 

13 



Culture and citizenship 

It is not true that good citizenship is gaged by the depth of cultur- 
ing study or famiharity with philosophical theory. It rests upon the 
balanced sense which is the joint product of decent breeding, of 
familiarity with men and things, and of the labor which shows in 
things accomplished, either manual or intellectual, and in sweat 
upon the brow. The man who mends your shoes or makes your 
clothes is likely to average just as safe and potential a citizen as 
the one who tries to train your refractory stomach, the one who 
fills you up with economic theory, or the one who supplies theological 
deductions to your mystified soul. The one who produces physical 
results in life is certainly no less to be counted upon than the 
one who writes the more freely when he is not obliged to be troubled 
with any facts. 

The practical element in education 

These considerations are at the bottom of the widespread criti- 
cism against our public educational system. Everybody worth 
considering knows that the mere ability to read and write is 
no adequate equipment for efficiency in our complex life, but 
everybody also knows that no system of training, no matter 
how elaborate, which leads inevitably to pursuits which are 
exclusively intellectual or only culturing will sustain our com- 
plex civilization. It is right here that the plan and scope of our 
Western universities, very largely state universities, are pushinjj 
them strongly to the front rank in American higher education. 
The feeling is very common that there is no sufficient reason 
why the courses of study and the influences of the lower schools 
should lead decisively to those higher institutions which are only 
culturing or professional, or to those departments of universities 
which are essentially so. There is a strong and justifiable senti- 
ment that the work of the elementary and secondary schools 
does not support the industrial as well as the classical or pro- 
fessional departments in the universities which have provided 
for all phases of human learning. There is a strong and sus- 
tained sentiment that the elementary schools ought to do more 
for the pupils who are not going to college at all, if the 
advantages of our popular system of education are to be equal 
for all. .A.nd there is a decided and a justifiable belief that the 
elementary schools, taken as a whole, train for versatility more 
than for exactness, and that — either because of this or because 
they have been loaded with too much, or both — they do not 
turn out pupils who can do any definite thing very satisfactorily 
when they must go to work. 



If I interpret the situation correctly, the common sentiment 
of the country fully sympathizes with the old line literary col- 
leges. It feels that there is a place for them, and wishes them 
well. It has abundantly demonstrated its decisive support of 
university training in aid of the industries. But it demands that 
the elementary training shall lead more decisively to the indus- 
tries and to business, whether pupils are going to the advanced 
schools or are going to work; and that the work of the lower 
schools shall be sufficiently concentrated and made sufficiently 
exact to support the expectation that pupils shall be able to read 
intelligently, write legibly, perform mathematical processes 
readily and correctly, and entertain serious notions of real work 
when they leave the schools. The objection is not that the 
schools do other things, but that they do not do these things 
before the other things, and that the result amounts to a dis- 
crimination against the industrial masses and the very ones who 
stand most in need of free education. 

Then the whole question as to what the schools shall do is 
an open one. Apparently, they must have less, rather than more, 
to do. If not, then a large part of the children must have less. 
It would seem that there will have to be more differentiation of 
courses, with reference to future living. There will have to be 
more drill and more firmness of treatment in the purely ele- 
mentary work, at least. The work will have to be adapted to 
years so that whenever a child leaves school he may be able to 
do very well what the world may justly expect of one of his 
age. There will have to be more exact attention to present 
actualities than to remote possibilities. It would not be strange 
if the lower schools were yet required to give every child not 
only the means of informing himself and of expressing himself, 
but also a definite trade or vocation through which he may earn 
a living. This would be doing less for the children who will 
never go to college than most of the larger towns are already 
doing for those who go to the high school, or than most of the 
states are already doing for the thousands who go to the state 
universities. 

Here is the great, overwhelming and difficult question in 
American education. I surely could not settle it. We might 
discuss it in this congress for a month and we could not settle 
it. It is to be settled out of the abundant experience, the demo- 
cratic purpose, and through the natural and logical unfolding 
of the free life of the nation. 



15 



Nonattendance upon the schools 

There is another unsettled question, and clearly a very serious 
one, to which I must advert. It has reference to nonattendance 
upon the schools. It will not do to assume that all in this free 
country who ought to go to school will do so. All parents are 
not anxious about their children's educational welfare. Some 
parents and children will wallow in ignorance unless they are pun- 
ished for not taking advantage of the schools. And the worst of it 
is that the very common sentiment seems to be seriously indifferent 
to the compulsion. 

The most recent data available to me shows the percentage 
of illiterate electors in England to be .009 per cent., and the 
percentage of illiterate recruits in the German army to be .05 
per cent. In France 4.4 per cent of men and 6.3 per cent of 
women signed the marriage register with a cross. In Switzer- 
land .33 per cent, of the men entering the military service w^ere 
illiterate. The last report of illiterate conscripts in the army 
of Holland shows that it was 2.1 per cent, and in the army of 
Sweden it was .08 per cent. 

Now, let us examine the figures of the United States census 
of 1900, showing the percentage of illiteracy among males of 
voting age in the United States. In the country at large it 
was 10.9 per cent. In the North Atlantic Division it was 6.8 
per cent ; in the South Atlantic Division it was 24.5 per cent ; 
in the North Central Division it was 4.9 per cent ; in the South 
Central Division it was 23.3 per cent, and in the Western Divi- 
sion it was 6.7 per cent. That is, in no one of these great 
divisions of our country is the showing so favorable as in any 
one of the countries I have named, and geneis-Ilv speaking it 
is so much worse as to shame us. 

Take several typical states from East to West : in Massa- 
chusetts the percentage of illiterate potential voters is 6.4, in 
New York 5.9, in Ohio 4.8, in Illinois 4.8, in Iowa 2.7. in Ne- 
braska 2.5, in Colorado 4.1, in Alontana 6.1, in California 6.2 and 
in Oregon 4.8. Taking states from North to South: in Michigan 
it is 5.5, i}i Indiana 5.6, in Kentucky 18.8, in Tennessee 21.7, in 
Alabama t,;^.j and in Georgia 31.6. In no American state is the 
showing so satisfactory as in England, in the German Empire, 
in Switzerland, in Holland, or in the Scandinavian countries. 

I can not analyze and exploit this all-important subject here 
as I shall endeavor to do in another place at no distant day. 
But here it may be said that there is abundant evidence of a seri- 
ous difficulty in the indiffei-ence of public sentiment or in the charac- 
ter of our educational legislation or in the execution of it. And 



it may be added that, no matter how great our revenues or our 
energy or our genius for doing things, no matter how rich, how 
strong, how commercially successful we become, we shall not 
honor ourselves nor illustrate the advantage of democratic gov- 
ernment to other peoples until as many of our people as of 
theirs are taught to read and write. Whether we can do it or 
not is a very large matter for American statesmen, and an unset- 
tled and grave question in educational administration. 

The responsibility of the schools 

There is still another matter pertinent to our subject, and 
with a reference to that I shall release your patient attention- 
There is a frequently expressed disposition to hold the schools- 
responsible for about everything that goes wrong in the country- 
If there is an epidemic of crime, or an outbreak of objectionable 
business methods, or any other distinct evidence of widespread moral: 
turpitude, or if all boys and girls are not more completely ready 
for a swifter and more complex life than was ever expected in- 
all history before — the schools are taken to task for it. 

Every step and every influence of the common schools make for 
character. It is true that religious instruction is not very common 
— not as common as it used to be — but it is also true that it is as 
common as denominational opposition will permit. There is nothing 
done that does not contribute to cleanness and decency in living, to- 
exactness and correctness in thinking, and to refinement and true- 
ness in feeling. Everything is done in these directions up to the 
very limits of opportunity. 

It is a fundamental policy of this country that political officers shall 
not meddle with denominational instruction, and that ecclesiastical 
officers shall not bend the policies of the state to denominational ends. 
It is not because of any indifference to religion but because of the- 
necessities of the case in a cosmopolitan population of freemen and 
in a state which is opposed to all favoritism and stands for equal and 
exact justice for all. This policy leaves religious teaching to the 
family and to the church, unless the universal consent invites the 
common schools to give it. And it seems to me that between the 
schools, and the churches with their auxiliary agencies, and the 
family life, the children are being trained in free religion and sound 
morals about as well as can be expected and quite as well as in any 
days of vore. Indeed, it seems to me that our democratic life and 
our free and rational teaching are developing a people with more of 
the elements of undefiled religion and with less of the factors which 
have burdened true religion than has been common in other lands 
and in other days. And in this the common schools are doing all 

17 



that the sound moral purpose of the country will sustain and all that 
the settled political theory of the country will permit. 

But there is a difficulty, extended and discouraging, outside of the 
schools. It operates in spite of the schools. It grows our of the 
American disposition to place freedom above security, to protect 
liberty at all hazards, and take the chances of license and its con- 
sequences. 

It seems to me that many of the common usages and some of the 
most conspicuous object lessons in the country make for dishonesty 
rather than integrity. An infinite number of people have become 
what once would have been thought exceedingly rich. When one 
becomes halfway rich he becomes money mad and resorts to methods 
for overreaching all the rest with an ingenuity and fiendishness 
which out-devils the Devil himself. There is lack of law and lack of 
prosecutors to stop him, and his success in gaining money by im- 
moral methods and in keeping out of jail — through the help of 
astute lawyers and abhorrent forces — predisposes too many of the 
rest to copy his example. Some phase of this thing is everywhere 
in the land and it corrupts the life, particularly the young life, of the 
country. Are the schools responsible for that ? 

Again, the railroads are great educators. They educate us in 
much that is good, and also in much that is bad. They train us in 
promptness — and in evasiveness. The laws concerning them are not 
yet very well settled. They observe no moral restraints not fixed 
by law and they are past masters in the art of changing and evading 
the laws which they dislike. Men who are all that can be desired 
in their individual characters are often all that is undesirable in cor- 
poration service. But this is not all, and perhaps it is not the 
worst. They assume that everyone else will violate or evade the 
law if he dare. For example, they assume that everybody will steal 
from them, and, with something of a fellow feeling for those who 
do, the matter is soon dropped when they find it out. They closely 
inspect and often outrage honest people who board their trains. 
When they find one on their trains wrongfully, they put him ofif and 
that is the end of it. The decent folk resent the shabby treatment 
and are predisposed to retaliate, and the indecent folk get off so 
easily that they are predisposed to try it again. Upon an European 
railroad everyone is treated with politeness. It is assumed that one 
who boards a train has the right. If one is found on board without 
a ticket or money he is carried to the next station and put in jail. 
The road and the public prosecutors make punishment sure and 
severe. The honest people get decent treatment and the dishonest 
ones get the punishment they deserve. It educates in integrity more 
than we are accustomed to think. It is particularly impressive 
upon the ignorant and upon the young. If, then, native honesty, or 

i8 



at least, correct living, is more common among the masses of an 
European than of an American city, are the American schools re- 
sponsible for it? 

Yet again, nothing is a legal crime until a statute makes it so. 
Criminal procedure rests upon legislative acts and not upon the com- 
mon law. The regulation and punishment of crime is far from 
settled. It has not kept pace with the progress of the country. It 
is so dilatory and uncertain as to shame us. Money can defer pun- 
ishment indefinitely except in the most flagrant and noted cases — 
and often, indeed, in those. Public officers charged with prosecu- 
tions are sometimes found dividing the plunder with thieves in con- 
sideration of immunity from punishment. The thing pervades our 
affairs broadly and makes a vicious impress upon many lives. 

If business greed and cunning employ chemistry to cheapen food 
stuffs, and even medicines, by eighty or ninety per cent without 
lowering the cost to the buyer; if trustees enrich themselves at 
the expense of their trusts by having secret wheels within wheels ; 
if there is no longer a standard of value for materials sold or ser- 
vice rendered except what " the traffic will bear " or what can be 
collected; and if the young or the inexperienced are misled or 
deceived by the everyday "schemes of the prosperous or the rich 
which are violative of law or against good conscience and fair 
dealing, are the schools to be taxed with it all? 

On my way over the mountains to make this address, I fell in 
with the superintendent of a California gold mine and, in my inno- 
cence, asked him how they prevented their gold from being stolen 
by workmen or marauders. He said there was no trouble at all, 
that the miners were as a rule exactly honest, and that if a thief 
got into camp he was in danger of disappearing between two days 
so completely that he never troubled anybody after that. The 
method is a little severe but it seems to be efficacious. Most people 
need to be surrounded and supported by a system which commends 
decent people and punishes the guilty. If keenness and overreaching 
have outrun law, if the slowness of our criminal procedure has 
caused it to pretty nearly break down before our swift and com- 
plex life, and if we can not or ought not employ gold mine methods 
to keep men straight, are the schools to be made the scapegoat of 
it all? 

Here is a great matter outside of the schools which is unsettled 
and which will have to be settled. It is wholly unfair to charge any 
lack of moral character or of common honesty which may be dis- 
cerned in the country to the plan and scope of the educational sys- 
tem. When the law is perfected and is observed, when all may 
know that it will be speedy and sure and equal in its application to 
all, the matter of correct living and of moral character in this coun- 



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021 313 368 8 



try seeras likely to rest upon as sure a fc 
country. The difficulty in this behalf S( 

growth in population, in the overwhelmirx^ ^..^..^^^ , „^. ^-. 

life, and in the backwardness of legal and administrative systems, 
rather than in fundamental political principles or in the plan and 
scheme of the schools. 

The men and women of the schools are so accustomed to settle 
things that they are rather predisposed to shoulder all the burdens 
that are shied at them and determine all the hard problems that 
come up. The unsettled questions that are legitimately and neces- 
sarily upon us are many enough and heavy enough. If we throw 
back upon the country the hard nuts which are not ours at all, if 
we resent the constant attempt to use the schools for special ends, 
if we confine them to what they must do to vindicate our political 
and educational theories and justify the money they cost, we shall 
have quite enough to do. But we shall be able to do it. As some 
matters that are outside of the schools approach solution, the unset- 
tled questions that are necessarily inside of the schools will settle 
more easily. 

Conclusion , 

The nation is just beginning to realize that the fundamental politi- 
cal principle which holds all men and women equal before the law, 
with the now well developed national policy which provides free in- 
struction to the very limits of human knowledge to all who will come 
and take it, involve an expense of unexpected magnitude and present 
questions of unprecedented difficulty in organization and adminis- 
tration. But there will be no turning back. More cheerfully than 
the people meet any other tax, more cheerfully than any other people 
ever met any tax not vital to the national defense and the saving of 
life, the American people supply and will supply the funds for 
universal and liberal education. The difficulties will not be met in 
a year ; they will never be settled in a corner. They will be solved 
by the rational projection of the political theories which are the 
inspiration and the guide of the nation's life. They will be met with 
courage and confidence, even with wit and enthusiasm. They will 
be settled through discussion, and yet more through experience. 
Not all that we plan will come to pass. The unexpected will often 
happen, and in time we are likely to see that the unexpected is better 
than the plan we made. The logically progressive purpose of our 
millions of freemen, the gradually unfolding scheme of our nation's 
mission in the world, advancing in accord with a plan that is more 
than human, will overcome difficulties and break out the roads for 
a sane and balanced system of education which will give most to the 
nation through the opportunity it will hold out and the encourage- 
ment it will give to every one. 

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